I waited until after my program officially ended to travel to the forbidden city of Oaxaca. Back in August (seems so long ago) at the orientation in Mexico City, some Fulbrighters had to be reassigned to a new city because of uprisings against teachers. Throughout my 4 months, there was nothing that I heard about that situation, but that does not mean it could still be dangerous in some parts of the State of Oaxaca.

I was there only a few days, but the experience was worth wait. First of all, the weather during the last week of December was perfect sun and shorts weather. I insisted on wearing my linen shorts everyday because when I get to New York tomorrow, my tanned legs won’t see those shorts until mid-June.

Oaxaca has many historical places outside the city, such as the Mayan Ruins of Monte Alban and the “frozen waterfall”. Both of these places were impressive because of their (respectively) historical significance and natural beauty. Within the city, there are museums. However, I felt that I had just spent the past 4 months visiting what feels like close to 20 museums and I was saturated. I loved every museum I visited, but the few in Oaxaca will have to wait until my next visit.

What’s actually good here are the artisan crafts and the food. I liked the woven woolen rugs and the intricately painted wooden menagerie of animals. I was able to squeak into a morning cooking class on Thursday (as there was one more space to make a group of 10!) to experience the complicated process of making Black Mole. Now I know that about 30 ingredients go into the making of that sauce and it’s not only chocolate that gives it that flavorful depth and complexity . It took several hours, but the meal was worth the group effort at the end. Also, I will just buy a jar of Black Mole and call it good.

I had planning to chat with another Fulbrighter researcher, Austin, in Puerto Morelos, but it did not happen. I wanted to go diving by the reef off the coast to bring back some stories for the Fish Club in Harlem New York.

This used to be a small fishing village, but with the increasing popularity of Cancun resorts, the tourist creep has come to disturb the natural fauna of the Mayan Riviera. I wanted to ask Austin about his work with the lobsters and the fishing rights for indigenous fishing industry. We did not meet, but this is what he emailed me a couple do months ago.

Austin said, “Fishing rights in Quintana Roo are granted to cooperatives, which distribute these rights among their members. The NGO I’m working with has a strong relationship with some of these cooperatives, who have made great strides toward sustainability. In 2012 and 2013, the cooperatives worked with the NGO to set aside some of their fishing concessions to create legally recognized “no take zones,” where fishing would be banned for 5 years in an effort to preserve fishing stocks. When the refuges were established, interviews were carried out with many of the fishermen from multiple cooperatives to assess their understanding of and attitudes toward these no take zones. Now that 4 years have passed and the refuges are coming up for their first round of governmental review, we’re going to repeat that study to see what benefits and costs the fishermen have observed with the refuges, and whether or not they are still in favor of them. Once this project is done, I’m planning on carrying out a more quantitative, economic analysis to see how the annual lobster catch has been affected by the implementation of the reserves, and more specifically, if certain fishermen benefit more from the reserves than others. Finally, plans are in the works to attempt a lobster-tagging study to assess migration of lobsters from protected areas out into fishing grounds, but this is permit-dependent, and I’ve heard the permitting process here is a nightmare.”

So, perhaps in Chetumal I can get some fish-related story for the Fish Club. I will go to two museums that focus on Mayan history and some markets that sell artisan items. I’m excited to go and see what they have!

I made it to Tulum! That means I have spanned the country of Mexico from east to west: Tiajana to Tulum; and from north to south: Monterrey to San Cristóbal de las Casas. During my 4-month Fulbright, I did not travel to Tiajuana, but rather it was on my first trip to Mexico, in 1989, when I made a cross-country puddle-jump flight from Tiajuana down to Guatemala City , at the heels of Hurricane Mitch. I unofficially copiloted a 2-passenger fixed-wing Cessna150. It was the craziest thing I have ever done. Such a small aircraft is suitable for local flying, for example, around your city and state; not transnational flights. I live to tell about it as a testament to the saying that “ignorance is bliss”.

Tulum is quite a bit smaller than I thought, yet quite a bit busier with daily commerce and tourism. The ruins of the Mayan civilization are nice. They are like the ancestral beach resorts of the high Mayan priests. There are sacred caves that still are filled partially with rain or river water called cenotes. About an hour drive from Tulum is a cenote that I visited with my British friend, Chay, called Cenote 7 Bocas (Well with 7 Mouths). This was a true cenote because the caves were joined together by underwater passages drilling with stalactites! I wish I could have taken pictures underwater for you , but my smartphone is not that smart.

It was an eerie feeling just walking down the wooden ladder into the first Boca to the platform. Ropes were tied to guide you from platform to platform. This helped me initially. The first sensation when I jumped in was that rainwater is cold. No natural hot spring here! My rented mask helped me to make out the stalactites in the cave under the pale green waters. I couldn’t help but imagine that the guide at the reception area said NatGeo came here and measured the cenote depth at 150 meters. That’s half of the Empire State Building. So, I kept my head above the water.

One of the highlights of these 4 months was a whale-watching boat ride I took off the coast of Puerto Vallarta. This town had a reputation of being a party town, but I believe that was several years ago because I did not see much partying during the weekend I was there. If fact, any noise came from the parading devotees marching in pilgrimages for the Virgin of Guadalupe day on December 12th. Perhaps I was part of a non-crowd, neither a pilgrim or a party person.

I signed up for this whale watching excursion the first weeks into my program. The whales are most visible from December through March, so this was the only weekend to experience it. I searched for a reputable company and all reviews pointed to OceanFriendly. They did not disappoint. It was educational as well as efficient.

The group that weekend met in the morning at the pier for a brief 20 minutes talk on whale migration behavior from and to Alaska. I learned that there are many types of whales in the Pacific Ocean. I was partially relieved to realize that what I had heard from an eco-tour guide in Chiapas about baby whales born in Mexican waters might eventually be caught and eaten in Japanese waters. The water off the coast of Puerto Vallarta is the right mixing of warm temperature water from the south this time of year, which switches on the mating instinct of the whales. These temperatures also cause more krill to be produced to feed the wildlife.

On shore we saw beautiful iguanas called Queen Iguanas because of their spiky orange head adornment that trails down their backs. They are green bodied, so the black and white blocks that color their long tails make these iguanas very striking to behold. I could not tell whether they were happy by their expressions because they have to look mean to warn predators (I suppose humans are their enemy since they are endangered), even when the come for their lunch feedings put out by non-predatory humans. On the boat, on the way to the whales and after the whale watching, we saw boobies, which are marine birds with feet that could be either brown, yellow, or blue! Amazing.

The Bay is made from two tectonic plates that are separating. One on the south side is more lush and sustains more wildlife, whereas the north side is drier and has of course less vegetation. It’s interesting to look at the land formation from the boat as the hills and mountains are arranged at about 45 to 90 degrees from each other. Perhaps the name Vallarta derives from vaya, which means “go away”.

As for the whales, we saw three groupings of two or three. They are so amazing to watch because they seem to be playing or chasing in such a natural way. Contrast this behavior to animals in zoos or large holding tanks for the benefit of humans. I so dislike these circuses that use animals to make money. With the use of digital technology, experts can be paid to film animals in their natural habit. Instead of paying to see animals do tricks, we can pay to see them act naturally. How far will this idea go?

It takes some patience to watch whales because they don’t jump up just because there are people around. But when they do, I loved the experience of witnessing an animal the size of a bus spout air at the surface and dive back down, sometimes their tales come up! The underside of the tale is the whale’s fingerprint. No two are exactly alike, so they are easier to track. Evolutionarily speaking, these white colorations are camouflage. From the bottom of the sea, the whale is camouflaged against the sky and clouds. From the top, they are blue so they can escape from whalers.

Visiting Mérida was like a going back to the 1800’s. The glorious mansions that line the Pasejo de Montejo are still there, reminding us that this was an important town that governed the Yucatán Peninsula, or at least the northwestern part of it during the Caste Wars. That information I will safe for a later post. What you can experience in Mérida is heat. The best times to be outside are before 10 am and after about 3 pm. Be warned and stay inside from 10 am until about 3 pm.

One of my Fulbright research friends, Shalanda, took me on a great evening walking tour from around Pasejo de Montejo to Calle 60, which is Mérida’s 5th Avenue (in NYC). We ate the best mole covered mushrooms at a small cafe. Later, we happened upon a book launching of community stories, too. The book is a compilation of stories that are from the Yucatán. I bought one for myself and one for students. I am sure these stories will enhance their understanding of the people from this area, especially the students who made videos of their communities in Maxcanú. It was all very serendipitous.

Did you know that there is a growing community of expats in Mérida? The weather and low cost lifestyle are what has fueled this town’s growth. I thought for 10 minutes about spending more time here, but the heat would really drive me away. To keep cool, the men here wear the traditional guayaberas which are shirts made of light fabrics like linen (local and Italian), cotton, and others. I bought one, probably overpriced, to wear during some blistering hot New York summers. The main industries here were logging (of palo tinto, or red cedar, used for English textiles) and henequen, a fabric made from the stately maguey plant. There is a great museum here dedicated to the yucatecan music and ballad singers from the 1930’s to 60’s. A must-hear for anyone who visits Mérida.

Today marks a month since my midway point through this Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching grant. Refer the the midway post here if you want to get some background. I’m approaching my last month in Mexico as if I were trepidatiously skirting the edge of an abyss. My grant officially ends in 3 weeks and I have one more school visit this week to collect a few more significant stories from students. My blogs do not at all resemble my vision of them when I began this trip in terms of look or utility. I would consider it a giant fail if I do not get it together by departure time.

Despite this pressure, I am somewhat comforted by the work I have managed to do from September through November. All that preparing, teaching, traveling, reading serve as a parachute and hang glider as I jump off into December. I am embracing the trajectory that this project put me on in terms of the digital stories I will show my students in Harlem, New York, as well as the stories they will produce from January through March 2017.

We will share them via link to my main Escuela Secondaria No. 29 in Iztapalapa, Mexico City, as well as the Telesecundaria in Maxcanú, Yucatán, México! I hope other teachers can share their students’ stories through the various online teaching platforms I am joining. Also, in February 2017, I will be in Lima again (at my own expense during our school’s mid-winter recess) to work for a couple days with the English teaching staff at the Colegio Marianistas in Callao, Lima, Peru where we visited last August on the Fulbright-Hays Semester Abroad Program. All this sharing about other students and cultures internationally should eventually shift the global consciousness toward a peaceful world even a modicum, right? Maybe.

At “T minus 4 weeks”, I can blog retrospectively that my time here in Mexico was unequivocally well-spent. Time went by quickly, but I feel vigilant every moment so as not to lose a learning opportunity that would widen my view about the Mexican culture, its people, economic development and education policy–for my own edification and that of my students. The underpinnings of the Mexican society today (I learned) is inextricably tied to historical events and movements fomented by the arrival of the conquering Spanish in the early 1500’s up to and including the election of the current president of Mexico. Of all the significant stories that I have read and heard here, the overarching tumultuous history of Mexico is the one that fascinates me the most.

Maxcanú, in the State of Yucatán, is just across the board with Calkiní. Equally small in population (around 14,000), they both suffer the same malaise in terms of school quality. Schools follow the same curriculum set forth by the national government offices (Secretaría de Educación Pública, SEP), however, I notice a wide gap between the national standards from SEP (that seem to focus on the advancement of urban school) and the educational needs of the rural population in towns like Maxcanú and Calkiní.

It would be great to channel support toward creating a curriculum that caters to that need, namely a more compact plan of study focusing a trade. For example, English for vocations such as baking, auto-repair, beauty school, art basics, and rural health screening. This includes training in treating patients with indigenous plants and apitherapy. The curriculum is shorter, but complete, so that graduates can enter the workforce earlier and earn money sooner.

Focusing on young mothers, return immigrants, girls and boys, and continuing adult education might begin to solve social issues that have been plaguing Mexico.